With all the recent severe disruption in parts of
Gloucestershire caused by flooding there must have
been some doubts in the last fortnight as to
whether the Three Choirs Festival might be under
some threat. However, the waters receded in time
and the 280th Festival duly got under
way on Saturday. This performance of War
Requiem was the first of the major concerts in
the magnificent surroundings of Gloucester
Cathedral. The work is one which often makes a
visceral impact on the senses and, especially, on
the emotions and I’m sure I was not alone in
feeling an additional sense of poignancy at
hearing this music – and Wilfred Owen’s timeless
poems about the sacrifice and futility of war – at
a time when members of our armed forces are on
perilous duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The work has a long association with the Festival.
At the 1963 Festival, in
Worcester,
Douglas Guest conducted what was only the
third-ever performance of the piece and it was
heard again at the next two Festivals. Indeed,
just before going into the Cathedral for this 2007
concert, I found myself in conversation with two
stalwart members of the Festival Chorus, now
retired, who had taken part in those, and several
succeeding, performances and upon whom the
experience of singing War Requiem had left
a huge impression.

War Requiem
has been criticised in certain quarters over the
years and, in particular, some people feel that
the juxtaposition of Wilfred Owen’s poetry and the
Latin Mass for the Dead is an uncomfortable one. I
don’t share this view. It seems to me that
Britten’s conception, linking the traditional,
ritualistic Mass text with Owen’s searing imagery
was a stroke of genius, especially at certain
points such as the potent moment in the Dies Irae,
where the vehement setting of ‘Confutatis
maledictis’ runs straight into Owen’s Sonnet On
Seeing a Piece of Our Artillery Brought Into
Action (“Be slowly, lifted up, thou long black
arm”) with it’s pounding timpani. It seems to me
that Britten’s selection of poems was pretty
unerring and that his instinct for which poem to
insert and at what juncture in the Mass text was
uncanny. The words of the Mass have inspired
countless composers but interleaving them with
Owen’s poetry in this way produced an impact that
is even greater than the sum of the work’s parts.

The three solo parts are hugely demanding. The
soprano role was written for the great Russian
diva, Galina Vishnevskaya, a uniquely histrionic
artist. The soprano sings parts of the Mass text
with the chorus and on some occasions I’ve seen
the soloist positioned with the choir. On this
occasion Judith Howarth sang from the more
traditional soloist’s spot at the front of the
platform and I’m sure this was a wise decision.
Miss Howarth is a singer with the right amount of
vocal heft for a role that very often requires
powerful projection. I’m afraid, however, that I
was disappointed with her performance. She
certainly possessed the requisite power,
especially at the top of her register.
Unfortunately, however, she consistently attacked
high notes from below, producing an ugly effect.
In addition I wasn’t always convinced that her
pitching was completely accurate.

The male soloists sing the Owen poems, accompanied
by a small chamber ensemble. Stephen Roberts,
singing the baritone role conceived for Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau, generally sang well. It seemed to
me that his voice didn’t have quite enough
amplitude to enable him to project ‘Be slowly
lifted up’ in this large acoustic without forcing
the tone and there were some occasions when notes
weren’t hit quite in the centre. However, he sang
’After the Blast of Lightning’ with sensitivity -
though the accompaniment was a little too loud
towards the end – and he reserved his most intense
singing, rightly, for ‘Strange Meeting.'

The outstanding solo performance was given by
James Gilchrist. As in so many Britten works a key
challenge for the tenor soloist is to banish the
listener’s memories of Peter Pears. So compelling
was Gilchrist’s performance that this was never an
issue. He sang with a wonderfully plangent tone
yet there was ample steel in the voice also. He
pitched every note faultlessly and, above all, his
identification with the text was complete. He
began ‘Move him, move him into the sun’ with
telling eloquence, using his head voice to
marvellous effect. Every word was crystal clear –
as was the case in all his solos – and it was
clear from the way in which he put the words
across that he cared. When, in this poem,
he sang the words “Was it for this the clay grew
tall?” it was heart-rending to hear. His solo in
the Agnus Dei was equally affecting, leading up to
a wonderfully shaded and exquisitely placed final
phrase. Like Stephen Roberts, he was at his finest
in ‘Strange Meeting.’ His singing of the ghostly
opening lines of that poem was absolutely
riveting; indeed, I can’t recall hearing it done
better. Gilchrist’s whole performance was quite
superb and makes me look forward keenly to hearing
him sing Gerontius in a few days time.

The Festival Chorus sang their demanding parts
with great assurance and fine tone. They had
evidently been well prepared. Perhaps Andrew
Nethsingha could have got them to sing the opening
phrases more quietly and with greater mystery –
and the ‘Kyrie’ at the end of the first movement
was nowhere near the ppp marked in the
score. However, they more than compensated
elsewhere in the work with singing that was
characterised by great commitment and accuracy. At
the ‘Tuba Mirum’ the chorus sang with tremendous
bite and clarity, as they also did later on at ‘Confutatis.’
I also admired the sensitive way in which the
ladies delivered the ‘Recordare.’ There was
splendid attack in the ‘Quam olim Abrahae
promisisti’ fugue in the Offertorium – a weaker
part of the score – and, encouraged by Andrew
Nethsingha, they built up the relentless march of
the ‘Libera me’ with impressive power. This was a
most impressive debut by the 2007 Festival Chorus,
which promises well for the remainder of the week.

A word of praise, too, for the small group of
choristers who sang the crucial Boys Chorus parts
from the organ loft. Under the direction of
Gloucester’s Assistant Organist, Robert Houssart,
they sang with pinpoint accuracy, great assurance
ad clarity.

To say that War Requiem is a complex score
would be an understatement. As is well known, many
early performances used two conductors, one
directing the choir and main orchestra while a
second, often Britten himself, directed the
chamber orchestra and male soloists. There was no
such division of labour on this occasion. Andrew
Nethsingha was in sole charge and he exerted an
impressive control, clearly having the full
measure of the piece. His was a very convincing
interpretation of the score – the huge canvass of
the ‘Dies Irae’ came across, as it should, as one
continuous span, the Owen poems fitting easily and
naturally into the Latin Sequence. Just once or
twice I felt that he pressed the tempos a little
too much, perhaps to ensure that precision and
detail was not lost in the resonant acoustic. For
my taste, the tenor and baritone duet, ‘Out there,
we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death’, was just
too quick. Admittedly it’s marked “Fast and gay”
in the score but here the pace seemed just a
little too jaunty and it seemed to me that the
singers were a bit pressed to articulate the
rhythms and the words with sufficient clarity.
Another place where I questioned the tempo was the
duet in the Offertorium, the parable of Abraham
and Isaac. Here the marking is “rather deliberate”
but the music didn’t come across in this way and
it wasn’t until the singers combine to tell of the
appearance of the angel that I felt the tempo was
really right. As a result a bit of the poetry was
missing in this important section.

Elsewhere, however, Nethsingha’s control was
impressive. The menacing and slowly accelerating
march at the start of the Libera Me was built up
impressively and with great tension, leading to a
suitably cataclysmic climax. He also handled the
final pages (“Let us sleep now”), where at last
Britten brings all the forces together, extremely
well. Just occasionally the balance between
orchestra and chorus got askew – principally at
the ‘Hosannas’ in the Sanctus and Benedictus where
the brass, and the horns in particular, were given
their head a bit too much for comfort. On the
other hand the music of the Dies Irae itself, with
the brazen brass fanfares, was put over with
shattering force, especially when this material
recurs after “Be slowly lifted up”.

Overall this performance of War Requiem was
an extremely impressive achievement, not least in
the atmosphere it generated – the lengthy silence
after the music died away spoke for itself. The
2007 Three Choirs Festival has been launched
auspiciously.

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